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What is the climax of Frindle by Andrew Clements?

Andrew Clements's Frindle tells the story of fifth grader Nick Allen and his attempt to create a new word. Nick is inspired to invent a word when he asks his strict English teacher, Miss Granger, where the words in the dictionary come from. When she assigns her students an essay based on the question, Nick uses the opportunity to invent the word "frindle," meaning pen. The word grows in popularity, first with Nick's friends, then throughout his entire school, and soon enough the word is in use throughout his town. His teachers and principal consistently try to stop the spread of the word, but soon realize it is beyond his control.


The climax of the story occurs when Nick's new word becomes so famous that national media outlets begin asking to interview him. This realization inspires Nick's father to sell the rights to the word and invest the earnings in Nick's college fund. Nick's world returns to normal after this; his teachers and school administrators stop trying to punish him and curtail the word, and the national media loses interest as "frindle" becomes a normal term. By the end of the book, "frindle" is a word in the dictionary.

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